Nosferatu - Movie Review

Nosferatu - Movie Review

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Nostraatu is the fourth film from Robert Eggers, the exceptional writer-director behind The

(00:12):
Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman.
This is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire
infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.
Saying all those titles just now made me realize this is the first time Robert Eggers
has made a film that doesn't start with the word the, which is a stupid point and isn't
really worth mentioning and doesn't really mean anything, and yet I mentioned it anyway.

(00:36):
This review is off to a great start.
Eggers is easily one of my favorite directors working today.
His films are beautiful and exceptionally well-crafted and well-researched, and I noticed
that he really does care about the way people speak and the dialect and the intonations
and how people might have said something, and it's very obvious that he is not living
in our current century in his mind.

(00:57):
He is very much interested in the past.
Maybe one day he'll make a film that takes place in modern times, but if he wants to
keep playing in this ball field, I'm happy to watch him because he is a unique and singular
voice that is approaching movies on a genre level from a very distinctive perspective.
Naseratu looks absolutely incredible.
The snow-swept streets, the horse-drawn carriages, the evil dark castle on the mountainside.

(01:19):
It's all beautifully evocative of exactly what you think about if you ever read any
classic vampire stories.
The costumes as well as the production design, everything is so immersive into this time
period.
The camera movements especially as well.
You have a lot of long, static takes, but sometimes you're moving around the outside
of these buildings and you're seeing hordes of extras and all different kinds of things

(01:43):
that are of the period.
It really feels like you're part of this world.
Nicholas Hold is having quite the year.
He's had Jura No. 2, which he's very good in, and he's had The Order, which he's also
very good in.
It's his third film that I've seen him in this year, and it's his best performance
out of the three.
He's terrific here.
He has one sequence where he meets Count Orlock, played by Bill Skarsgard, where he has to

(02:03):
play terrified.
And he plays terrified as realistically as I've ever seen.
I imagine a lot of that was aided by Bill Skarsgard's insane transformation into Count
Orlock.
Every word out of his mouth is just dripping with gothic dread.
And the look too is absolutely transformative.
I didn't recognize Bill Skarsgard at all, and there are elements of the facial design

(02:25):
that I didn't anticipate and some people will probably find kind of funny.
But that's something else that Robert Eggers does very well.
He has these movies that do have scary elements, but strangely make you laugh in awkward places.
The Lighthouse with all of Willem Dafoe's farts, for instance.
Willem Dafoe is also really great as an occult researcher who believes that Nosferatu is a

(02:46):
real thing.
And nobody else does.
Aaron Taylor Johnson, also very good as the husband of two young daughters.
His wife, played by Emma Corrin, is turning ill, and he doesn't understand why there's
a plague that's been brought upon this city, and Willem Dafoe is positive that it's because
of Nosferatu.
But the true shining star of this film is Lily Rose Depp, who plays Ellen Hutter.

(03:08):
The stuff that's required of her in this film as an actress is incredibly impressive.
She has to do multiple confulsions.
She has to do some love scenes that are very intense and very visceral, long take sequences
of her having genuine emotional breakdowns, while also being lucid enough for us to connect
with her and understand why she wants the things she wants.

(03:29):
So she's got to play insane.
She's got to play infatuated.
She's got to play doting wife.
And she's got to play normal ass person at the same time.
And all of it has to work for us.
This isn't all on her, of course, Robert Eggers and his great dialogue and his great
story is taking us through this very difficult journey for her.

(03:49):
But she is the North Star for this movie that guides us, and she is truly fantastic.
She's really, really good here.
It's the best work I've ever seen from her by far.
I didn't find Nosferatu scary in the traditional sense.
I do think that it's more of a dark fantasy.
It has a lot of great visuals and unsettling scenes, but I didn't find myself scared at

(04:10):
the movie in any particular part.
And I think that that's going to vary, of course, like any horror.
It's going to be subjective about what bothers you and what doesn't.
I think the scariest aspects of this movie are really Ellen and how she is dealing with
the strange emotions she's feeling and how she can go from truly loving her husband,
played by Nicholas Holt, and then feeling this strange pull towards Count Orlock and

(04:33):
not being able to describe what's happening to her body or her mind.
That's by far the aspect of the movie that I found the most disturbing.
There are some really gnarly, bloody visuals, though, that were pretty great.
All in all, Nosferatu is an absolutely gorgeous movie.
It's not my favorite of Egger's filmography, but I do think it's terrific and definitely
worth seeing on the big screen.
He continues to prove himself to be a voice that is 100% his own, and you have to support

(04:58):
a movie like that whenever it's in theaters, because these types of films where there's
risks and there's genuine art behind the decisions don't happen that much at this budget level.
So definitely support this one.
It's worth seeing.
I was going to say if you've seen the movie, I'm curious to know what you think, but it's
not coming out until Christmas.
So hopefully you guys do get a chance to see the movie, and I'm hoping you enjoy it.
Guys, thank you so much as always for watching.

(05:20):
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